Liberal fascism sounds like an oxymoron – or a term for conservatives
to insult liberals. Actually, it was coined by a socialist writer,
none other than the respected and influential left-winger H.G. Wells,
who in 1931 called on fellow progressives to become "liberal fascists"
and "enlightened Nazis." Really.

His words, indeed, fit a much larger pattern of fusing socialism with
fascism: Mussolini was a leading socialist figure who, during World
War I, turned away from internationalism in favor of Italian
nationalism and called the blend Fascism. Likewise, Hitler headed the
National Socialist German Workers Party.

These facts jar because they contradict the political spectrum that
has shaped our worldview since the late 1930s, which places communism
at the far left, followed by socialism, liberalism in the center,
conservatism, and then fascism on the far right. But this spectrum,
Jonah Goldberg points out in his brilliant, profound, and original new
book, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from
Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (Doubleday), reflects Stalin's
use of fascist as an epithet to discredit anyone he wished – Trotsky,
Churchill, Russian peasants – and distorts reality. Already in 1946,
George Orwell noted that fascism had degenerated to signify "something
not desirable."

To understand fascism in its full expression requires putting aside
Stalin's misrepresentation of the term and also look beyond the
Holocaust, and instead return to the period Goldberg terms the
"fascist moment," roughly 1910-35. A statist ideology, fascism uses
politics as the tool to transform society from atomized individuals
into an organic whole. It does so by exalting the state over the
individual, expert knowledge over democracy, enforced consensus over
debate, and socialism over capitalism. It is totalitarian in
Mussolini's original meaning of the term, of "Everything in the State,
nothing outside the State, nothing against the State." Fascism's
message boils down to "Enough talk, more action!" Its lasting appeal
is getting things done.

In contrast, conservatism calls for limited government, individualism,
democratic debate, and capitalism. Its appeal is liberty and leaving
citizens alone.

Goldberg's triumph is establishing the kinship between communism,
fascism, and liberalism. All derive from the same tradition that goes
back to the Jacobins of the French Revolution. His revised political
spectrum would focus on the role of the state and go from
libertarianism to conservatism to fascism in its many guises –
American, Italian, German, Russian, Chinese, Cuban, and so on.


As this listing suggests, fascism is flexible; different iterations
differ in specifics but they share "emotional or instinctual
impulses." Mussolini tweaked the socialist agenda to emphasize the
state; Lenin made workers the vanguard party; Hitler added race. If
the German version was militaristic, the American one (which Goldberg
calls liberal fascism) is nearly pacifist. Goldberg quotes historian
Richard Pipes on this point: "Bolshevism and Fascism were heresies of
socialism." He proves this confluence in two ways.

First, he offers a "secret history of the American left":

Woodrow Wilson's Progressivism featured a "militaristic, fanatically
nationalist, imperialist, racist" program, enabled by the exigencies
of World War I.
Franklin D. Roosevelt's "fascist New Deal" built on and extended
Wilson's government.
Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society established the modern welfare
state, "the ultimate fruition" (so far) of this statist tradition.
The youthful New Left revolutionaries of the 1960s brought about "an
Americanized updating" of the European Old Right.
Hillary Clinton hopes "to insert the state deep into family life," an
essential step of the totalitarian project.
To sum up a near-century of history, if the American political system
traditionally encouraged the pursuit of happiness, "more and more of
us want to stop chasing it and have it delivered."

Second, Goldberg dissects American liberal programs – racial,
economic, environmental, even the "cult of the organic" – and shows
their affinities to those of Mussolini and Hitler.

If this summary sounds mind-numbingly implausible, read Liberal
Fascism in full for its colorful quotes and convincing documentation.
The author, hitherto known as a smart, sharp-elbowed polemicist, has
proven himself a major political thinker.

Beyond offering a radically different way to understand modern
politics, in which fascist is no more a slander than socialist,
Goldberg's extraordinary book provides conservatives with the tools to
reply to their liberal tormentors and eventually go on the offensive.
If liberals can eternally raise the specter of Joseph McCarthy,
conservatives can counter with that of Benito Mussolini.

http://townhall.com/Columnists/Danie...lism?page=full